A knock on the door alerted Bill that his time with his phone was over. He stood from his place on the bed next to Tom, who he hadn't bothered to wake yet, and walked across the room to open the door. On the other side were Georg and Gustav, both of whom looked slightly concerned.
"Hey," the singer said in greeting. "Where's David?"
"He said he'd be here in a few," Georg replied, "I guess he had to go to the bathroom or something. I don't know; the point is he'll be here."
"Who's the girl?" the ever-direct drummer asked, pointing over Bill's shoulder at the feminine form laying in the bed, facing away from the door.
"Uuuuuuuuhhh," Bill stalled, still trying to figure out how to tell them that the girl was, in fact, Tom.
"Do you mean to tell me that Bill, the hopeless romantic, brought a woman up to his room, and didn't even bother to learn her name?" the bassist teased, assuming the band's youngest member's response, or lack there of, stemmed from not knowing. "I think Hell has finally frozen over."
"This isn't my room," Bill corrected as if that was the only thing wrong with Georg's assumptions.
"I guess Tom having a random over makes more sense," Gustav stated.
"Yeah," the singer said, "but the only person Tom had over last night was me. I practically had to carry him back up here, and I was the only other person in his room last night. Besides, he has a girlfriend."
"So, who's in the bed?" Georg questioned.
"Tom," Bill answered.
That response got Bill a couple of weird looks from his band mates and it wasn't until then that Bill noticed that they were all still standing in the doorway. He ushered the two older men into the room and they sat down on the couch while Bill went to the chair closest to the bed Tom was sleeping on.
Georg kept his eyes trained on the curvy figure in the bed. "That certainly doesn't look like Tom," he observed.
"That's why we need to talk," the singer replied.
"Are you going to wake him up for this or are we just going to talk about it while he sleeps?" Gustav, the most practical member of the band, inquired.
Bill sighed, "I probably should wake him up, shouldn't I?" That received a nod from both of the G's. "I'd been avoiding it for a while because he's been snapping at me all day."
Bill got up and walked the the couple of steps it took to get to the bed. He leaned down and place a hand on his twin's shoulder, shaking him lightly. "Tomi, wake up," he cooed.
Tom groaned. "I don't want to," he complained in a voice that definitely didn't sound like his own, leaving the other two band members very confused.
"Come on, Tom. The G's are here," Bill said, shaking him harder.
"Fuck them, I'm sleeping," Tom replied, and while his voice was unfamiliar, that did sound like something a grouchy and hungover Tom would say.
Knowing that they could probably go back and forth like this for a while, Bill made short work of their little argument by biting down on Tom's ear. Hard.
"Ow! What the fuck?!" Tom shrieked girlishly, holding his ear and sitting up in the bed immediately. "You bit me! What the fuck was that for?"
"You're awake now, aren't you?" was Bill's rejoinder.
The elder twin groaned, rubbing his ear and stopping when he noticed moisture there. "Am I bleeding? I better not be bleeding."
Bill pulled Tom's hand away from his ear, worried that his little stunt may have actually done damage to his brother. Relieved, he noted that there were noticeable, red teeth marks, but he hadn't bitten him hard enough to actually break the skin. "No, you're not bleeding," he replied. "Well... Never mind, I'm not going to say what I was thinking."
"Yeah, you'd better fucking not," Tom sniped, having immediately caught what Bill was insinuating.
Georg cleared his throat, reminding the twins that they weren't alone. Tom looked in his direction for about a second before attempting to hide as much of himself behind Bill as possible; he didn't want his band mates to see him like this. Unfortunately for him, Bill realized what he was trying to do, so he moved and sat next to Tom, leaving him out in the open, and put an arm behind his back, keeping him from trying to get behind him again.
Realizing that he wasn't going to be able to get out of this situation, he surrendered to Bill, staying put and dropping his head to avoid seeing the faces of the other two men in the room; he didn't want to know what they were thinking. He was honestly scared of what they would think about him like this. He wasn't sure why he cared so much all of the sudden because normally he didn't care at all, but now he did and he was terrified.
Without even looking up, Tom could feel Georg and Gustav staring holes into him, and all he wanted to do was sink into the bed and disappear. Georg's eyes were pretty firmly planted on his newly developed assets, which was to be expected from the bassist, but the more observant drummer was paying more attention to all the tattoos and piercings and other details that were specific to Tom, so while in Georg's mind, he was just a hot chick who really, really looked like Tom, Gustav knew for a fact that this was actually Tom.
Shocked by this realization, Gustav asked, "What the fuck did you do, Tom?"
"I didn't do anything," he stated, timidly looking up from his lap to the blonde drummer.
"You must have done something, because this," he said, gesturing toward all of Tom with his finger, "doesn't just happen."
Tom groaned. "I didn't do anything," he repeated, "except drink way too much and go into the restroom."
"Bill, what happened last night?" the blonde man asked after receiving insufficient information from the guitarist.
The singer shrugged. "Well, we were at the bar and Tom was drinking very very heavily. Then he got up to go to the restroom and he was in there for a really long time, like over half an hour, so I went to check on him to make sure that he didn't drown in a toilet or something like that."
"You thought I drowned in a toilet?" Tom interrupted incredulously.
"I don't know what I thought at the time," Bill defended, "I just wanted to be sure that you were okay."
Tom was about to respond, but Gustav cut him off. "Anyway, Bill, please continue."
"Uh," he said, needing a second to remember his place in the story. "Right, so, I went to the restroom to check on him, and when I got to the door, there was this weird, short guy with two different colored eyes and he told me to 'take care of him', and then I saw Tom sitting on the floor in the corner, sleeping and looking super happy. I woke him up and he was being all weird and cuddly, and then we came back here and went to sleep, and then when I woke up, he was like this," he stated, motioning with his hand toward Tom.
"Tom," Gustav said, redirecting his attention to the elder twin, "do you remember the guy Bill mentioned?"
"Vaguely," he answered honestly.
"Did you fuck?" was the stout and very direct drummer's next question. He didn't seem put off or anything, just curious.
Tom was slightly surprised by how blunt he was before realizing that he really shouldn't have been; that's how Gustav had always been. "No... I don't think so... Honestly, I don't know what I did last night so it's not impossible, but I don't think I would have done that."
"Fair enough," Gustav replied.
Tom noticed belatedly that Georg had failed to contribute anything to their conversation. Looking at him, he realized why; his eyes were still glued to Tom's breasts. Bill had dropped his arm a while ago, having assumed that Tom wasn't going to try to get behind him again since they had started talking, giving him the perfect opportunity to escape Georg's gaze. He knelt behind his twin and rested his chin on his shoulder, glaring at the bassist. "Is that better for you, Hagen? Couldn't you at least try to make it seem like you're not staring?"
Tom was very uncomfortable with the situation he was in, and then he realized that he had no doubt made women feel this way, and he felt guilty for it. This was not a good feeling.
"I'm sorry, but you make a really hot girl and this is very weird for me," Georg said in an effort to defend himself.
"This is weird for you?" Tom asked in disbelief. "I'm the one who's bleeding where the sun doesn't shine, so I don't want to fucking hear it."
That received a couple of wide-eyed looks from his band mates.
"I can't tell if he's being serious," Gustav said to no one in particular.
"He's completely serious," replied Bill, with as much enthusiasm as Tom had at the moment: absolutely none. "I've seen the evidence."
Gustav chuckled, " You're just having one hell of a day, aren't you, Tom?"
"You have no idea."
"So," Gustav cut in, "is there anything specific at all that you remember about the guy Bill was talking about?"
Tom thought for a moment before responding. "He kept complimenting me, and his hands were super hot," he eventually said, "They felt like fire."
"You do realize that doesn't exactly support the whole 'we didn't fuck' claim, right?" Georg said, finally adding something to the conversation now that the source of his distraction was now hidden behind the singer.
"I know," Tom replied, "but that's all I remember."
Before anyone got the chance to say anything else, there was a knock at the door, and Tom felt his stomach drop; if he thought telling the G's was bad, telling their manager would be Hell on Earth. He wanted nothing more than to hide under the bed and pretend he didn't exist. Sensing his twin's distress, Bill pulled Tom into his lap and the elder of the two buried his face in his brother's neck and held onto him like he was his only lifeline. This display earned yet another set of odd looks from Georg and Gustav, but before they could say anything about it, a more aggressive set of knocks was heard. Figuring that neither of the twins would be getting up, the drummer took it upon himself to answer the door, opening it just before David got the chance to knock again.
"Alright, what's going on?" the older man asked as soon as the door opened, wasting no time. He looked into the room and didn't see anything particularly out-of-the-ordinary at first glance. There was a girl balled up on Bill's lap, but while that wasn't a regular occurrence, it wasn't exactly noteworthy either. It certainly wasn't deserving of the worried call he'd received from the bassist. "Please tell me you didn't call me here because Bill found a girlfriend."
"I don't have a girlfriend," Bill replied, "so no, that's not why we called you."
"Then why did you call me?" the manager asked. "And who's the girl? And now that I'm thinking about it, where is Tom?"
Tom moved his face from its place in the crook of Bill's neck. "I'm right here," he mumbled, answering all of David's questions at once.
David just looked at Tom for a moment before he started laughing, getting strange looks from the members of the band. "Good one, guys. Whose idea was it? You really got creative with this one. But seriously, where is Tom?" He got closer to the twins and gave Tom a thorough look-over. "Where did you find this girl? The resemblance is truly uncanny."
"This isn't a prank, David," the singer said, slightly annoyed that the man wasn't taking the situation seriously.
"If this was a prank, I sure as hell would've liked to have been in on it," Tom almost growled, glaring at the older man. "This morning would've been much less stressful if I had known about this beforehand."
This statement threw the manager off guard. "What are you talking about?" he asked before his eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. "Did you guys kidnap a girl for the sake of a prank?"
"What?!" Tom exclaimed, "No, no one kidnapped anyone, and this is not a prank. I went to sleep like my normal self, and then I woke up like this," he said, gesturing at his entire body for emphasis.
"Or," the manager interjected, clearly still not believing him, "you shaved your face and bought some very convincing prosthetics to try to pull a fast one on me. I'm not falling for it."
Tom sighed, exasperated; David was making the situation more difficult. He was choosing to ignore the obvious changes - like the pitch of his voice or the fact that he looked like a girl in the face when that had never been the case before - for the sake of his prank theory, which was shaky from the start. Tom was determined to make the older man realize that this was real.
"Do these look like prosthetics to you?" he questioned, lifting his shirt to expose perky breasts, and shocking almost everyone in the room into silence. Gustav covered his eyes almost before Tom managed to get his shirt all the way up in a sort of knee-jerk reaction that came with being married with a kid, and David followed his lead less than a second later. Georg just sat there and stared as if his brain had stopped working, and Bill just laughed, not at all surprised by his twin's antics. He knew his brother better than anyone else, and he knew Tom would do whatever was necessary to get his point across, so naturally, he saw that move coming from a mile away.
"Alright, I get it!" the manager said, still shielding his eyes. "They're real, now put your shirt down."
Tom obeyed, satisfied that he finally got David to see reason and believe him. "So, what do we do now?"
"Before we get to that, you need to tell me how the hell this happened," Jost stated.
The twins recounted everything they remembered from the night before, from the drinking to Tom's encounter with the strange man, and Tom left no details out about his experiences the morning after. The older man was struggling to believe a word either of them said, because it all seemed so absurd, but then so did the rest of this situation, so he figured he should probably just go with it and try to find a solution instead of questioning it.
"I can honestly say that this is the most bizarre thing I've ever heard, and I haven't quite convinced myself that you two aren't clinically insane," the manager stated, earning a couple of near-identical glares from the twins. "But, something must have happened, so we need to find a way to work around this until we can get it resolved."
Bill and Tom visibly relaxed because that was the response they had been looking for. "So, what are we going to do about tomorrow?" Tom questioned.
"Well," Jost replied, " if this isn't some type of 24-hour curse or a weird shared dream that we'll all wake up from, you can stay here while they do the interview." He paused, directing his attention to Bill. "If someone asks why he's not there, just tell them that he came down with some mystery illness so he couldn't come."
"That sounds easy enough," said the singer.
"Beyond that," the older man said, "we'll just have to roll with the punches. If we have to reschedule some things, we'll do it. We can try to find out some more about the guy you mentioned and see what he knows, and we'll deal with each new thing as it comes."
Tom sat there for a moment, just processing the new information before responding. "Okay, I guess that's all we can do." He wasn't exactly pleased with the plan, because to him, it didn't seem like enough; it didn't feel like it was as high a priority as it should have been. But at the same time, he didn't know what else they could possibly do, so he decided some plan was better than no plan, so he'd go with what they had.
That didn't mean he was happy about it though.
"Great, now that we've got that settled," David interjected, "why are you sitting on Bill's lap?" he asked what the others were all thinking.
"Because today has been the worst day of my life, so I'm fucking stressed and Bill makes me feel better," the elder twin bit with enough venom in his words to kill a whale, scaring everyone out of making anymore comments on the subject. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself before continuing, "Can you all leave now? All I want to do is go to sleep and pretend that today never happened."
"Alright," Gustav answered for the rest of them. "We've talked about everything that we needed to, so there's no reason that we need to stay." He stood, making his way to the door, Georg and Jost following behind him. "We'll see you two tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," Bill replied since Tom had clearly decided that he was done talking to the others, having buried his face in Bill's neck again as the door closed.
Minutes passed, and Tom had made no effort to move, causing Bill to wonder if his twin had already fallen asleep. "Tomi?" he called, poking his twin gently to test for a reaction.
"Hmm?" the elder of he two responded in a fashion that told Bill that he wasn't asleep yet, but he wasn't far from it either.
"Do you want me to stay?"
"Please?" Tom asked, looking up at his brother with puppy dog eyes. Tom hadn't tried that look on anyone since the were children, but it was devastatingly effective, especially now. Bill had a feeling he would be doing whatever Tom wanted him to for the foreseeable future.
"Okay," Bill agreed, Maneuvering his transformed twin so that he was laying down instead of sitting on him before joining him and pulling the covers over them. Tom snuggled against him and dropped into sleep almost immediately while Bill laid there, contemplating the events of the day and wondering what the next would bring. Before long, he started to fade too; it had been a long and taxing day for him too, and sleep would provide the clarity he needed to deal with the next day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What? An Update? It's been almost a full year since the last one. I'm not going to promise anything, but I am going to make an effort to try to update at least every six months or so, but you all know how good I am at committing to these things. You should probably just expect me to fail and then be surprised/proud of me if/when I don't.
Anyway, if you have any ideas/constructive criticism I could use to make this story better, tell me In the comments.
Have a happy whatever holiday you celebrate in December and a Happy New Year.
Stay awesome, meine Freunde. ^_^